Vee and I were goin' over some old snapshots the other night. It's done now and then, you know. Not deliberate. I'll admit that's a pastime you wouldn't get all worked up over plannin' ahead for. Tuesday mornin', say, you don't remark breathless: "I'll tell you: Saturday night at nine-thirty let's get out them last year's prints and give 'em the comp'ny front."
It don't happen that way—not with our sketch. What I was grapplin' for in the bottom of the window-seat locker was something different—maybe a marshmallow fork, or a corn-popper, or a catalogue of bath-room fixtures. Anyway, it was something we thought we wanted a lot, when I digs up this album of views that Vee took durin' that treasure-huntin' cruise of ours last winter on the old Agnes, with Auntie and Old Hickory and Captain Rupert Killam and the rest of the bunch. I was just tossin' the book one side when a picture slips out, and of course I has to take a squint. Then I chuckles.
"Look!" says I, luggin' it over to where Vee is curled up on the davenport in front of the fireplace. "Remember that?"
A giggle from Vee.
"'Auntie enjoying a half-hour eulogy of the dear departed, by Mrs. Mumford,' should be the title," says she. "She'd been sound asleep for twenty minutes."
"Which is what you might call good defensive," says I. "But who's this gazin' over the rail beyond—J. Dudley Simms, or is that a ventilator?"
"Let's see," says Vee, reachin' for the readin' glass. "Why, you silly! That's Captain Killam."
"Oh!" says I. "Reckless Rupert, the great mind-play hero."
"I wonder what has become of him?" puts in Vee, restin' her chin on the knuckle of her forefinger and starin' into the fire.
"Him?" says I. "Most likely he's back in St. Petersburg, Florida, all dolled in white flannels, givin' the tin-can tourists a treat. That would be Rupert's game. "